Bethel University - Spire Yearbook (St Paul, MN)

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Sindent government is not merely a matter of pushing through temporary reform measures opposed by inertia to benefit a group of students who in four years at the most, will not be the least concerned with their existence. It is not a matter simply of testing one's strength, collective strength, against the bogey man of administration, winning peripheral appeasements to demonstrate power, nor a matter only of self realization for a select group who wins elections and institutes changes. But a little of all of that, of course. No perfect organization fed by perfect motives, performing best for a constituency concerned that the best of everything always occur, for themselves and their successors at the college, but something good and necessary just the same. Student Senate is an experiment; the innovators working to evolve an effective cohilition between student thought and school policy and services. The existence of student government is more than strategic political expediency on the part of the administration it is the recognition of the students themselves that reformation must be instituted within forms; that formality, (hough perhaps requiring reformation itself, is the holding center from which one may mark out expeditions. The existence of the Student Senate at Bethel, even with its built-in flaws or weaknesses, allows the possibility of exploration for effective alternate opportunities for the student population in those programs of group concern. Tradition is no evil, not even to the minds of student innovators. It is the obstinate refusal to see tradition as serving human concern, not dictating human conduct, which is irritating to the innovator. Tradition is a changing thing; it ought to be. The existence of Student Senate assures the uneasy that the gradual emergence from past patterns of thinking and behavior will not be abrupt and unthinking. Departure from nostalgia-fed ritual will be constructive. Greg Taylor, student body president, evidences remarkable sensitivity to the problems of the Bethel student population. His loyalty is to the creation of a structure best accommodating group realization within which the individual student has freedom of expression and the dignity of personal integrity. 23

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The Voice of the Students 7 were President The Bethel students of today, solving tomorrow's problems.

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 Lord, Let me live in Thy Will! Let me be a strong man t unafraid Let me be a gentleman kind • Let me be a good man honest Let me be a full man complete Teach me Father to be humble yet fill me with pride to carry Thy name throughout this searching world. Give me grace and patience and Love to understand the wrong and weak of mankind. Show me all the beauties of your earth and permit me to live life to its fullest. And when Thou shall choose that I should rest Lay me down to praise Thy name Lift me up to Heavens glories.